Welfare Reform

This cartoon was widely circulated amongst leftists on social media in the aftermath of the 2015 General Election:

(You can find the original here: http://wondermark.com/c1122/)

The inference I draw is that this is a criticism of Ian Duncan Smith's reforms to the welfare state (unless they think that Tories are completely against all forms of welfare?).

If so, and if taking things to absurd levels is acceptable in political discourse, then perhaps the welfare state could be visualised as a system whereby a drowning person is rescued from the water, and then has their clothes dried out for them by placing them in front of a fire, but in such as way as to tether them close by, with the fire being fed by equipment that would otherwise be used for future rescue attempts. Meanwhile the person rescued is slowly being roasted...

Seriously, though, can leftists not realise that welfare is a double-edged sword?

People need four things from life to avoid misery:
1) a basic standard of living;
2) purpose;
3) self-determination;
4) meaningful interaction with other humans.

Welfare provided by the state might address the first of these, but subverts the second and the third, and over time can result in an erosion of the fourth (partly due to the disengagement of remainder of the population).

Employment can address all four (in this country, anyway - but clearly not in the case of migrant workers in Qatar, for example).

I'm not saying that welfare isn't a necessary short-term measure, nor that those who are genuinely unable to care for themselves in the long-term should not be provided for generously; instead, I'm saying that we need a better system than something provided remotely and facelessly by the state. There needs to be engagement with welfare claimants from the wider community, especially with assistance to retrain those lacking in skills to find employment, but there also needs to be some sort of reciprocity. We are all interdependent on each other, so we need to sweep away the culture of entitlement.

A question I would like to ask is: why should welfare claimants in this country be entitled to a better standard of living not only than those in most other countries in the world, but also than that enjoyed by a typical worker in this country in the days of their great-grandparents?

If the answer is "because we're a rich country and we can afford it" then my response would be: we might be rich, but even we are not that rich; if we were, then we wouldn't have such a large budget deficit. Isn't it immoral to borrow now for consumption? That's the same as throwing the rescue equipment on the fire - eventually, we will run out and not be able to save anyone else in danger of drowning...